Narrative Therapy

responding to grief and loss with the re-membering tree of life

Abstract

In Narrative Therapy, the tree of life intervention was originally created by David Denborough, Michael White y Kcaselo Knube (2008) at REPPSI in Africa to do group work with children that have suffered war atrocities. The present proposal consists of doing the tree of life methodology, with Re-membering interventions; this consists of the work with families that have lost a love one within a therapeutic process. The methodology was design to recuperate the history of the relationship with the absent love one and family life, in a conversations with circular externalizing questions, through which, the relationship with each family member had with the absent love person, can be made visible, prioritizing that relationship, through life experiences, the knowledges and skills that the absent person gave each family member, recuperating the love and support that has been part of family life. The objective is to maintain the relationship alive beyond dead (Hedtke Lorraine, 1999). Also, to understand  the  positive effect the process of the tree of life  has to reestablish the relationship with the absent person, some central categories of narrative therapy are needed, like re-membering conversations , White´s(1994) proposal for grief “Saying Hello again” and the creation of Re-membering tree of life conversations.